Chongqing

Right now we are on a train that started at 4:20 and will end at 9:50. It's 7:25 right now. We got to go to a book store with a few English books! We bought Peter Pan. There was a copy in English, and in Chinese. Together it was about 5-6 dollars. Lunch was also cool. I got to have a little Chinese food 🍱! It was certainly tasteful. I chose not to have much of any thing. My family and I went to a mall. It was huge! We bought racing swim suits, and goggles. The suit might fit perfectly 😍! Before we got on the train, we had to go though the train station. That was NOTHING like what I thought it would be. It's sooo crowded. I had to sit in between Jake and mom to stay with them😅. It was... an experience. I was glad to get on the train but the train isn't the best. Can't wait to get home, but this is so fun!

-Lydia

Today has been all about important life lessons for our children. It is one thing to come to China and go visit Beijing and see all of the historical sites and interact with the Chinese people. It is fun to try to communicate with them when there is such a big language barrier. It is an entirely different experience to enter the Chongqing train station and attempt to catch a train to a more remote part of China. 

We have been sitting in the train station in the "preferred waiting room" because we paid an extra 80 Yuan for help with our bags. That's about $15. It is beyond crowded, filthy, loud, reeks of cigarette smoke and is just complete chaos. And this is everyday life for millions upon millions of people. The filth is beyond describable. I don't think there is enough hand sanitizer in this world to make us feel clean at this moment. Restrooms are the worst. If you can get to a 5 star hotel restroom then you are lucky. But here in the train station it is a 1 star at best. In many public restrooms soap isn't even an option. They don't even have dispensers. Same story with toilet paper. Almost all toilets are "squatty potties" and sometimes there will be one or two "western toilets" in a public restroom, though not always. There always are in airports or nice hotels though. But some just skip toilets altogether. We've seen a man going by the highway. We've seen multiple people hold their 3 year olds over the public trash can in this waiting room to go. We've seen children just squat to the ground and go. Today has just really solidified in our minds why Violet could not come. She is only 3 and puts her hands on her face as well as ours. We would all be sick. The city center is cleaner than Beijing as far as the sidewalks and the air. But public places that are old and in disrepair without any maintenance and millions upon millions of people just don't lend themselves to a clean environment. We are spoiled in the US. Our standards for cleanliness are high. Our expectations of public maintenance are high. It is good to see another way to live. It is not wrong. It is just different and not at all what we are used to. I imagine we will get more of that lessons as we get to Xiushan which is a small farming community. We will really get a more traditional Chinese experience I think/hope. It is good for us to be stretched outside our comfort zone. We get very comfortable in the US with our spoiled ways.  And we are wayyyy outside of our comfort zone with this whole experience.  

Today we went to the Civil Affairs Office in Chongqing. It is not in the same building it was 10 years ago. We got to look through her adoption file and surprisingly we had been given copies of pretty much the entire thing when we adopted her. We did get to take a picture of her footprint the day she was born/brought to the orphanage and we got to take a picture of her earliest color photo from right after she was born. She can still make that grumpy face!!  Haha!

Tomorrow apparently we will visit the orphanage although we heard it wasn't an orphanage anymore and is in a different building. So, we don't know what to expect. The part we consider the entire reason for this trip is to go to the entrance of the trade center and stand in the place that she was left to be found and taken to the orphanage. It's been quite a ride to get to this spot of the world and has taken a long time. 

We are getting a bit homesick. We are missing HGTV, healthy American food, space, fresh air on a consistent basis, and most of all, sweet Violet. 

Lydia got to eat some yummy, very spicy, Chongqing food today. Chongqing is a municipality in the Sichuan province. It is not officially a part of the province but like Sichuan, Chongqing has very spicy and delicious food. Our guide was very careful to communicate to the restaurant about her allergies and follow up so we allowed her to try two dishes and steamed sweet potato leaves. She liked it but didn't love it. She did love getting to take part in the experience. We don't have the same guide now as we had in Beijing. We are also no longer with a group. That means our individual needs can have priority attention. We will take it on a meal by meal basis. I don't know how it will go in XiuShan. At this point I'm just praying for acceptable hotel accommodations. We will see.  Off to enjoy 5  1/2 hours of China's countryside before arriving in XiuShan. 

Update...We survived the train ride and are officially in Xiushan. It is 11pm so it is dark but the city looks beautiful and it is more developed than I had imagined. It is not at all common for Xiushan to have foreign visitors so you would have thought aliens just got off the train with the way people were gathering around to see us, ask us questions (that we couldn't understand), and bombard our guide with questions. They followed us out of the train station and were asking where we were staying. I'm glad that our guide didn't tell them or I think they'd be knocking at our door!  We are showered (and thankful to get the cigarette smell out of us) and are off to bed. We have an important day tomorrow. 

-Carla